I overheard snatches of the Addams crowd’s conversation. They were chattering like old lady gossips. One of the women laughed loudly.
“Shh, La Crisia!” said another woman. “Control yourself.”
La Crisia covered her mouth with her hand. She had a near white complexion and black hair. Wearing a black jacket over a long black skirt, she had the decided flair of a vampire.
“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Addams said as he crossed the room and addressed Mr. Riley.
Gus and I became attentive to the conversation.
“Who could have done this?” asked Mr. Riley. “You have to help us, surely you must have some idea.”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine. I don’t understand it,” said Addams.
“But you will help the investigation,” insisted Mr. Riley.
“Any way I can,” said Addams.
“Let me explain something to you, Mr. Addams. If I find out that you had anything, anything at all to do with Autumn’s death, I will use all resources available to me to make sure you fry. If you’re innocent as you claim, then I damn well expect you to help with the investigation in every respect.”
“Of course. I will help.”
Now I knew why the Rileys made a point of having this memorial planning rehearsal. It was in order to set the stage for this confrontation with Addams. Mr. Riley motioned for us to join him.
Glenn Addams said we could call on him any time of day or night; then he made for the exit door. Gus and I agreed to split up. I would continue to observe the Addams entourage while he took the memorial. I watched from the chapel lobby as Addams and friends piled into a limousine. I slipped out the chapel door and into the parking lot just as the limo pulled away. I dashed to my car, got in and turned the ignition, then waited a moment before I followed the limo out through the iron gates.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE LIMO SNAILED DOWN La Brea, turned right on Melrose, then down an alleyway, and finally parked behind a concrete building painted a steel gray. It was the easiest vehicle in the world to tail. I searched around in my glove compartment and found a stale pack of cigs, then dug around in my purse, found some matches, and lit up. The doors to the limo opened and the Addams entourage got out one by one and gathered together for a moment.
I took the smoke into my lungs as I remembered what Kunda had said about death being as far away as the next deep breath of your own black potential. I decided that saying of hers could be my life theme. A familial affliction of melancholy came over me. I can’t explain it except to say that it goes beyond depression. It’s much more active than that. I brooded again, my thoughts running over what Gilda had said about a graveyard of runaway children that had been tortured and set on fire.
The building appeared to be a private club. In LA, they call them anonymous clubs. The gray concrete structure offered no signs or any other indication that it was open to the public. The lot was filled with Mercedes, Jaguars, and various 4x4s. There was only a back door, the frame of which was painted a vibrant red. A portly bald man stood guard at a formidable chain that crossed the entranceway. A red light spilled from the doorway over the doorman, making him look like the gatekeeper to hell.
I waited until all the Addams flock had entered. Addams hadn’t paid to get in and I got the distinct impression that the doorman knew him. Maybe I wouldn’t have to flash my badge and announce to everyone I was a cop.
I’d always wanted to do undercover work, but my foster mum, Donna, had advised me against it. Said it was too stressful, that I didn’t have the stability or the stomach for it. I locked my car and strolled over to the entrance.
A group of four young women—girls, really—ran up as if in a hurry to get on a ride at Disneyland. They assembled, all giggles and nervous energy, at the doorway in front of me. Their fresh faces and expectant grins belied their daring attire. Their bodies were adorned with chains, leather, and handcuffs and they each wore bust-enhancing underwear as if it were acceptable as clothing. The doorman inspected their IDs and told them to come back on Thursday night. I had to resist my maternal urge. Where I come from, you don’t have to know a kid to give them a switchin’ if they’re doing something wrong. If I hadn’t been working and trying to slide in without making a scene, I’d have pulled those girls to the side and lectured them on self-respect. “If you’re gonna let us in on Thursday, why not tonight?” demanded one of the girls.
“Thursday is under-twenty-one night,” said the doorman.
They sulked away in a cloud of curses and disappointment.
“Glenn Addams,” I said to the doorman with a nod down the hallway as if I knew it would allow me entrance. It did.
The red-lit hallway took a couple right angles. I arrived in a pitch-black room with a few tiny red lamps and recognized the music blasting from the speakers as Nine Pound Hammer—sort of a joke, referring to the one popular group, Nine Inch Nails. I only knew the music because of a case I worked previously involving a rock star of sorts. I looked around the room, spotted Glenn Addams in the light around a pool table, and moved toward him. Addams studied the green table, about to break. The white ball blasted into the triangle of colors and the numbered balls went scurrying.
La Crisia, and the other young women with Addams, slowly stripped off layers of clothes to reveal racy S&M outfits of leather, vinyl, and chains. Not exactly proper grieving attire, more like Satan’s little helpers. I stayed well back, away from the red lamps, careful not to be spotted.
Finding my way in the dark, I leaned against a wall with a ledge on it. I figured it was probably for drinks. After a while, my eyes adjusted to the darkness.
A woman dressed in a black rubber mini-dress sat at a nearby table and puffed on a long cigarette holder. Her dark hair was short and spiky. She lifted one of her finely sculptured legs and rested a stiletto-heeled foot on the table.
Just then, Addams took a break from the game and whipped out a dog leash, and I forgot about the woman in rubber.
The producer demanded, “La Crisia!”
La Crisia dutifully stepped forward. She wore a crisscross of leather that barely covered her breasts and snatch. A thin thong of leather went up the crack of her white butt. She had on a pair of thigh-high black boots that had gone unnoticed at the memorial because of her long skirt.
Addams snapped a rhinestone collar on her neck, which he hooked onto a leash. La Crisia was prompt to heel, sit up, lie down, and so on at Addams’s command. Their behavior had a tango aspect to it, all done in dramatic playfulness. If you go for that sort of thing.
A tall guy in a Calvin Klein suit broke out some white powder and shared it with members of the party.
I looked around for a payphone because I had lost my cell phone in New Orleans, spotted one near the restroom, and made my way over. I dialed Gus on his cell.
While Gus’s cell phone rang on in my ear, a skinny black guy with long dreadlocks pulled out a giant joint and lit up. He had a big knot right in the middle of his forehead. It gave his face a magical quality as if he were a budding black unicorn. His eyes were startling blue pinwheels. His thin body and his nervous electric energy made me think he did more than smoke a little pot, and I had him pegged as a mainliner. Somebody needed to tell these folks there was a law against drugs. But then, in a sense, this was a different sort of chapel. A church of darkness. Gus didn’t answer, so I left a message telling him my location. I figured the memorial must be wrapping up by now, which meant he could meet me here in case I got a line on something. Gus is good about checking his phone messages, so I hoped he would show before I left.
The black guy with the bump on his head was talking to a woman and I heard him speaking with an Island accent. “Oh, Dewey, you sweet!” exclaimed the woman as she grabbed the giant ganja roll from him and took a toke.
Dewey? More than a few people pressed forward around him. A blue-eyed black guy with an Island accent and a big knot on his head, named Dewey. Couldn’t be too many of those around. I
made my way back to the bar and found a seat, thinking that was as good a place as any to keep an eye on the scene.
As soon as I got settled in my chair, someone blocked my view. I could see nothing except the perfect specimen of the male physique before me, his hands on his hips. His look said, I’m sizing you up. I would have laughed at him, but his wide chest and washboard stomach were uncomfortably impressive. He was the type of man that women drool over and advertising execs exploit in diet drink commercials. His skin was tanned perfection. He wore black leather pants and no shirt, and a small gold cross hung from a gold chain around his neck. Dark body hair curled tightly around his belly button. His leather pants hung low on the hips where more body hair pointed the way to his manhood. His wavy hair was fashionably messy.
“Good evening,” he growled.
I stared at him wondering how long it had been since I’d been with a man. Had it been six months? He was checking me out in a friendly way. I didn’t want to care about how attractive he was. I realized when I looked up at him I had to gaze past his pecs to look into his face. I considered standing up but decided against it. I also noticed there was a small diamond stud in his left ear. The fragrant cologne and intense sexuality were pleasantly distracting. I found myself imagining what it might be like to kiss such perfect, full lips, to hold a neck like that in my hands.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
Was he asking me what kind of kink I was into? He stood close and waited patiently for my answer. Meanwhile, he inspected my neck, my hair, and my lips. His eyes danced all over my body.
“Well?” he said. “What will it be?”
Another possibility sped through my mind and I chose that one.
“Gin straight,” I blurted.
He seemed amused at my momentary confusion. I felt naïve, maybe even stupid. “Be right back,” he said and turned his back on me. He moved across the room like royalty, as if he weren’t naked from the waist up, and then I lost him in the darkness.
The guy didn’t really seem to belong in this crowd. Though his costume was very convincing, his demeanor said he was above such antics. Perhaps that was part of his act.
A wiry man with bleach-blond hair over by the Addams crowd jerked spastically to the music. From what I could see, he seemed to be buddy-buddy with the black guy with dreadlocks. It became increasingly apparent that the blond guy was irritating people. One of the Addams girls shooed him away, dismissing him with a flick of her bony wrist. The Addams bunch generally tried to ignore the guy as much as they could, turning away from him at the earliest opportunity. I thought I picked up an Australian accent off him but couldn’t be sure. He snorted some coke and did a lewd rocking movement with his hips which wasn’t even remotely sexy.
Everyone in the crowd near the pool table was still snorting white powder and smoking pot. I heard the wiry guy with bleach-blond hair yell a couple of obscenities at his reluctant companions. Why he was yelling and cursing wasn’t clear. It was hard to tell if he was upset or just having a good time.
“Will someone get The Barb out of here?” said a voice nearby. The Barb?
“Ah, let him be,” answered a dominatrix with a British accent, in shiny silver vinyl. She had a widow’s peak like the evil stepmother queen in Snow White. Cleavage jutted out above shiny silver rocket-ship breasts. There was a decidedly camp atmosphere to the whole experience.
Where was my drink? I wasn’t sure if I had guessed right about the underwear model. He didn’t exactly have a tray for drinks or anything like that, but I hoped he would come back with the gin in any case. There was a bar right beside me so I was a little confused and then suspicious about where Studly went to get our drinks. I slipped my hips up on the barstool, swung my feet under me, pulled another stool toward me, hooking it with my toes. I planted my big feet on the bottom rung and tried to relax.
A strange couple was sitting at the bar, two big lumps dressed in rumpled clothes. They had to have five hundred pounds between the two of them. I thought it must be a man and a woman. They looked like they could be twins. They never spoke to each other—just sat like two boils, nursing their drinks. The big woman-lump chain-smoked, worse than Gus, lighting up one after another. The man-lump fidgeted, picking and biting at a red, raw thumb. Then the wiry blond guy, The Barb, came up and whispered to the man-lump who counted out some money.
I assumed it was for drugs, but here it could be for anything.
The woman-lump caught my eye and I instinctively looked away. Those two lumps were a team of sorts and I meant to keep them in my sights.
The woman-lump beady-eyed a young girl, who must have scored a fake ID because she didn’t look a day over fifteen, as she made her way to the ladies’ room.
Several other people were smoking cigarettes and I reached for my pack of stale Marlboros. I took a red box of matches from a glass bowl on the ledge and lit a cigarette. Black letters on the box said DE SADE’S CAGE in the same print as the flyer I’d found at Autumn Riley’s. I took in the smoke with no small amount of pleasure. Addams continued to play pool. I tucked the matchbox in my pocket.
So this was De Sade’s Cage.
I signaled to the bartender, a weary guy in his late thirties—you could tell that he’d just about had it with his drink-making career at De Sade’s Cage. He wiped barstool seats and the counter in a rapid display of cleaning skills. His legs were muscular in his red spandex pants. One side of his head was shaved and the other side had long hair, brown and straight. He had several earrings in each lobe, which gave him the appearance of being much younger than his years, until you looked into his tired gray eyes. He came over to me and I flashed my badge as discreetly as possible.
“Answer my questions and answer them fast. I’m investigating a murder.”
“A murder?” He shook his head as if to negate that reality somehow.
“I want to know about the blond guy over there acting like an ass.”
“Oh, him? Sure, whaddya want to know? Can’t stand him.”
“Who is he?”
“The Barb, they call him.”
“Why do they call him that?”
“That I don’t know. He’s tight with that Haitian guy, they go way back.”
“What Haitian guy?” I asked.
“The one he’s arguing with.”
He pointed to where the Barb was rough-talking the guy with dreadlocks and the bump on his forehead.
“The black guy they call Dewey?” I asked. The bartender nodded. “They argue like that a lot?”
“All the time. Who’s on top, that sort of thing. Don’t worry, they’ll make up.”
“You mean they’re lovers?”
“I don’t know and don’t want to.”
“Why do you say they go way back?” I asked.
“One night they sat right here at the bar, talkin’, bullshittin’, you know. Then the Barb, he puts some lighter fluid in his mouth and then he, he uh, he takes the lighter to his mouth and man, it was a blowtorch! I don’t know if he learned that in the Aussie circus or what.”
“That it?”
“No. Thing is, they burned the seat on one of the stools, caught it on fire. I don’t know how they did that. Must have been when I wasn’t looking. I thought they were trying to scare me or something, I’m not sure. I threw a pitcher of water on it right away. But I didn’t like that shit too much and the next time they stayed late, I kicked them out before I started closing up. Stupid fuckers is what they are.”
“Aussie circus?” I asked.
“The Barb, he’s Australian, and I think the two of them met in Haiti. They can go back there and stay as far as I’m concerned.”
I watched for a moment as the woman-lump hefted her large mass up from the bar and shuffled across the room. She was huge and she looked strong. The man-lump became more animated, chewing on his thumb. The guy really needed some therapy. As did everyone else in the room. What an orgy of psychotherapy a good fifty shrinks could perform in thi
s room. The woman-lump disappeared into the restroom door just beyond the payphone.
“Did they ever mention what they did back in Haiti?”
The bartender was wiping his bottles, making them shine, and stopped for a moment to consider the question. “Right, yeah. They said something about working for a doctor. The guy, Dewey, he was like a lab assistant? Or something like that.”
“Would you say they supplied a lot of drugs to the group that hangs out here?” I asked.
“I would.”
“Mostly pot or harder stuff?”
“Whatever you can dream up, really, from what I heard. You name it, they could get it for you, for a price.”
“Did you ever buy any drugs from them?”
“Nah, I stay away from those fuckers.”
The dominatrix with a whip in her talon circled me several times like some kind of silver falcon. I gave her a look that said, Back off. She must have decided that I was too formidable to be prey because she began circling in on a man who looked remarkably like an accountant.
“One more thing,” I said as I pulled out Autumn’s picture. “Ever see her here?”
The bartender inspected the picture.
“Sure, she came in once. I don’t think she liked the place much.”
“Why is that?”
“Just a vibe I got.”
“Who was she with?”
“That guy over there,” he said, nodding toward Addams.
“With Glenn Addams?”
“Right. It was a problem because she was underage and I refused to serve her, told her she had to leave. We can lose our license, you know. We have an official under-twenty-one night. I told her to come back then.”
“And what happened?”
“She split.”
“Did Addams go with her?”
“No. He stayed. I’m sure the limo took her home. I got the feeling they weren’t getting along so good.”
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